- [Announcer] Production and distribution of City Club Forums on Ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Inc. (energetic music) - Today's forum is the first of our Building Success series, where we will explore the stories of Black and Brown business owners and the unique challenges of business leadership.

This afternoon, we'll hear from leadership at the highest levels, ownership.

While this series is focused on success, we will not shy away from the truth about the challenges that need to be addressed to build a more equitable economic future here in Northeast Ohio.

In America, there's a prevailing narrative that free markets are an equal opportunity employer, that the right amount of grit, determination, and entrepreneurial spirit, anyone can make it.

We're gonna challenge that today.

For Black men and women who have made it and now lead successful multimillion-dollar enterprises, what structural and/or systemic obstacles did they overcome to get here today?

We are really pleased to be joined by Ariane Kirkpatrick, president and CEO of The AKA Team, a full-service commercial construction and facilities company.

As a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about small business, Ariane offers small project division while also working on some very large projects familiar to many of us, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Horseshoe Casino, the convention center, the Huntington Convention Center, right?

- Yes, it is.

(audience laughs) - There was a, Cynthia, there was a typo, Eaton's headquarters and more.

She's also CEO of Harvest Grows, the sole Black-female-owned company licensed to grow and dispense cannabis in Ohio.

(audience applauding) - Whoo!

- Also joining us is Warren Anderson, who traveled the world and changed careers before he created the largest Black-owned company in Ohio, Anderson-DuBose Company in 1993, 30 years.

His company is a powerhouse supplier in the food service industry and for decades has been supplying product to McDonald's and Chipotle restaurants around the state, along with many other fast delivery restaurants.

Today, AD is one of the largest minority-owned businesses in the nation and recently was named McDonald's Supplier of the Year, congratulations very much.

(audience applauding) - Whoo!

- Both of our guests have a journey to success that offers lessons for entrepreneurs and those committed to removing structural barriers to equity.

Today's conversation is moderated by Mr. Michael Jeans, founding president of Growth Opportunity Partners, which offers community development capital services and solutions to grow small businesses primarily located in underserved low-to-moderate-income communities in Ohio.

If you have questions for our panelists, you can text them to 330-541-5794.

Again, that's 330-541-5794.

You can also tweet them @thecityclub, and the staff will try and work them into the second half of the program.

Members and friends of The City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming everybody.

(audience applauding) - Good afternoon, everyone.

Can you hear me clearly?

- Yes, fine.

- Yes.

- Great, I'm Michael Jeans.

I'm president and CEO of Growth Opps, and I have the distinct honor of moderating a conversation with two dear friends.

As we get started, I'd like to set a bit of stage, and I've scripted myself so that I don't go too far off-center, but I think we're gonna stray a bit in a deep conversation.

If we walk through history of opportunity in America, we're keenly reminded of laws, of exclusions, and other obstacles for African Americans.

You probably don't need me or us to recite the lengthy list of inequities.

So while we won't ignore their existence, today we'll focus on the navigation.

I'm a planner by nature, and planning for today's session, a few things continued to resonate.

There's no singular path for the successful African American entrepreneur.

There's no singular reaction to the obstacles, some unique to African Americans and others shared.

And so you might take away from that two doses of obstacles for the African American entrepreneur.

And three, you don't need us to share with you what you already know, the obstacles are persistent.

They're solvable, yet they remain.

Until the latter changes, there are two things we can do.

We can navigate.

We can offer solutions to policymakers, institutions, and their leaders and hold accountable.

If you would, please close your eyes, and I was gonna say with me, but I have to read.

(audience laughing) Please close your eyes for a moment, and I'm going to present two questions to you.

What is the first image for you of a successful entrepreneur?

What is the first image that comes to you for a successful corporate executive?

And lastly, how does your personification of excellence and success show up in your work and your decision-making?

If you would, open your eyes for me.

Have you ever been snowed in but really need to be somewhere else?

Have you seen that movie where they're snowed in, they're in a cabin.

They could've filmed that in Cleveland with being snowed in.

(audience laughs) They're on a mountain somewhere, and then that guy shows up, but this time he has no plow.

He has no plan to get you where you need to be and no insight on how he navigated the terrain, but he'll stay for the hot chocolate and maybe a cup of coffee.

Yeah, we're not gonna do that today.

Today our panelists will spend time sharing with you how they've navigated and how they lead.

And with that, Ariane, I'd like to start out with you.

(Michael and audience laughing) Can you share with the audience the nature of your business?

And Warren, I'm gonna ask you to do the same.

- Okay, well, I own a construction company and medical marijuana, two businesses that aren't too friendly to people that look like me.

They're already challenging for those that look otherwise as far as medical marijuana and construction.

We have been in business since 2009.

I am a serial entrepreneur.

I owned a delicatessen, a home inspection business, another rehab construction business.

I'm probably, oh, a copy business.

I owned a lotta things, but construction has always been my passion.

I liked when you said close your eyes, because the image that I saw when I closed my eyes was where I grew up on 100 and Cedar, and all I knew were businesses that happened to be Black owned.

I knew Jimmy Wright, Jimmy and Sarah Wright who owned the grocery store, Beatrice Academy, the pretty, beautiful woman walking to go learn how to be the best beauticians in the city.

Art's Seafood, where my mother took my sister and I often for many concerts, for many dinners.

That's where I grew up.

I grew up seeing people that look like me own businesses in my community.

As I got older, and I still saw these businesses, ironically on January 19th, 2009, a day before President Obama became the president, I didn't stay, I was in DC, I sped all the way home so that I can see one of my idols who was in "Black Enterprise," and that was Warren Anderson.

He does not remember this.

(audience laughs) I actually remember because I'm like, "I am missing the inauguration of the first Black president of the United States to see Warren Anderson?"

(audience laughing) But that was important to me.

That was seeing a Black entrepreneur that was doing things who I read about in a medium like "Black Enterprise."

So I just wanted to answer that since you said, "Close your eyes."

- Thank you very much.

Warren, you have the task of following Ms. Kirkpatrick.

- How embarrassing.

(all laughing) So my businesses are food distribution.

So my company in Lordstown, and I have a facility in Rochester, we cover parts of five states.

We sell food products.

So if you go to a McDonald's or a Chipotle, if you eat anything from one of those restaurants in five states, I've sold it to 'em, or the Happy Meal toys, the packaging, produce, dairy, you name it, and I'm selling it to the franchisees in five states for McDonald's and Chipotle.

In 2001, I bought a beer distributorship in Oklahoma City, and we, I still own that with some partners, and we sell Miller, Coors, Corona.

So that's what I do.

- It's quite a bit.

(audience laughs) I'm gonna toss this to you, Warren, what obstacles, unique and shared, did you experience as you leveraged your business acumen to grow your companies?

And if you would, come back around to how did you mitigate them, because you're not sitting here if you didn't do that.

- Well, unlike Ariane, I was not a serial entrepreneur.

I'm a journalist by trade, and I worked at a TV station in Hartford, Connecticut in 19, well, some time ago.

(audience laughs) Anyway, I had been transferred to Hartford from another market.

This is kind of a long-winded story, but I think it'll give you a sense of kind of how I got started.

I got fired from a company that I worked for for 15 years.

I kinda knew it was coming.

I and my boss didn't get along.

And I think when I told him to F off.

(audience laughs) - [Michael] It's a short path.

- You know, going out with the blaze of glory, right?

(audience laughs) So at that point, it was such a painful experience that I decided I never would work for anybody, ever.

And so I set out with no business experience, but I taught myself, and within two years, I went from being unemployed to doing my first deal, which was a $100 million deal.

- Wow, wow.

- Wow.

- And now we're slightly over half a billion in sales.

My goal is to get to a billion.

- That's outstanding.

- Wow.

(audience applauding) - It's excellent.

- So I've gotta take one moment at least, because my banker is Sean Richardson.

So I wanna make sure that as I try to get to the billion that, what.

(all laughing) - And the room is filled with witnesses, so well done, Warren.

- Calling you out, Sean.

- Now I know how you closed the $100 million deal the first time around.

Ariane, I'd like of you to take a moment to share your experience as you, a serial entrepreneur, and you shared some of the obstacles with me.

If you could share those and to whatever extent you're comfortable.

- So I often say and start off with Langston Hughes' poem, "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair" in the entrepreneur world, but my mother and my father set a journey for me that was unbelievable.

I've always been hardheaded, so I didn't always follow it.

So my past had a lotta detours, curved roads.

I'm probably scared of bridges this day because of the path that I take.

But it was challenging because I grew up just being so proud of being Black and this Black female.

I literally thought I was gonna be the president of the United States.

I thought that, and then one day I kissed a boy, and I said, "Oh, they're gonna look into my history.

I kissed somebody, so that's the end of politics for me."

(audience laughing) So it was more so a business world, and I've always just enjoyed business.

I had great examples around me.

So I did not really realize that me being Black, female, and Catholic was a detriment to my success, all three of those, the fourth one is being short.

(audience laughs) And those are really, so it just makes me think, you know, all about the diverse things about me and my life.

So my path has been hard in the construction industry.

It's a male-dominated career.

I wasn't well received, but they did had a time about quotas and percentages.

And I really think MBE and SBE and all that kinda stuff are really great, but what happens is you get stuck in those quotas because people have started to be woke.

So as they wake, they say, "Oh, let's put a Black person on this job.

Oh, better yet, she's a female."

But what would happen is they would call me just to fulfill a quota, just to fulfill a percentage, and that hurt really bad because I'm talented, I'm good.

I built the Cleveland Clinic, Warrensville schools, Lakewood schools.

We are a qualified, quality construction company, but yet I still get calls that say, "What's your MBE rate, what is your Black rate?"

And I play dumb like, "Huh, what does that mean?

What does that mean?"

And so and it really gets very, very challenging.

Again, the marijuana business was probably the hardest thing that I ever went to and, hardest thing in my life.

We just recently got our last license.

We are officially vertically integrated, the only Black in the state of Ohio, Black and female, state of Ohio that's vertically integrated.

That means we grow, sell, and dispense.

(audience applauding) I learned so much about court systems and being sued and being challenged and being questioned about the color of my skin and if I was qualified to be in this business, but yet we have persevered.

So it's been a hard journey.

When we, right before we opened, they painted the N-word on one of my buildings.

I was- - How long ago was this?

- That was- - 20, 30 years ago?

- (laughs) Right, you would think.

Yeah, no, that was just a couple years ago.

And I remember the young lady calling to tell me, and she was in tears when she called me.

She was like, "I don't know how to say this."

And because I've been so numb in my journey, I was like, "Let's just paint it."

And that's how we do things, we paint over things.

And so I wanna be that person that helps us change the narrative, to change the whole paint, change the whole story so that we all can succeed.

I don't wanna be a single rose.

I wanna be a bouquet, a bouquet of flowers in the field.

(audience applauding) - And I have to tell you, your business, the cannabis helps my business, fast food.

- It surely does.

(audience laughing) We should put 'em next to each other, all the time.

- So we've got capital in the room and a potential joint venture, is what I'm seeing.

(audience laughing) Yeah, you know, I appreciate you sharing the story, Ariane.

And Warren, I appreciate you sharing yours because the reality is there are two separate careers here.

There are two separate paths here.

And sometimes when we think about Black-owned businesses or Black fill-in-the-dots, there's an expectation that there's one blanket, that there's one solution, but not so much.

And so today you're seeing two real experiences.

And if you're an African American and you're an entrepreneur, you're a budding entrepreneur, hopefully you can see yourself in at least one of these experiences.

So the ability to navigate has been critical to your success.

What does navigating the terrain look like from your seat and through your lens, Warren?

And this is a specific question that's come from a number of folks in the audience.

- Can you repeat the question?

- Absolutely.

- How did I navigate, or how do I navigate?

- How do you navigate?

- As to the obstacles.

- You showed up as, your first client, your first with $100 million and new to the business, right?

- Right.

- And so you have to navigate newness, you have to navigate Brownness, what did that look like?

And as you continued to grow, how did you navigate, how did you mitigate many of the challenges that were presented?

- I think having a unconditional point of view of being excellent, setting clear expectations for the people that worked for me and myself, relentless, and being able to, let me give you one example.

So when I was first negotiating one of my deals, I was buying a majority company, and the head of that company, I was sitting down, we were in a conference room trying to negotiate the deal, and I had a white colleague with me.

So I would ask this gentleman a question, and he wouldn't answer me, he'd answer to my colleague.

So I got, started to get mad, and I thought, "Well, what's your purpose for being here?"

It was to do the deal.

So I thought, "Okay, doesn't want to talk to me."

I'd ask the question, he'd answer my colleague.

And rather than getting mad, we took a break.

I told my colleague, "He's obviously more comfortable with you.

That's okay, at the end of the day, he's gonna be signing checks to me, we're good."

(audience laughing) Just staying on task and not being thrown off by stuff like that.

His issue was not my issue, and I was not gonna let his view of me compromise what I wanted to achieve.

(audience applauding) - There's such nuance in that, and I wanna pull it out, right, because what I'm hearing is not that the obstacle wasn't present.

I didn't hear that there wasn't a disparate treatment.

What I heard is to what extent are we willing to allow ourselves to become distracted?

We can still deal with it, but how do we stay the course so that when we're in a seat of influence, we can influence that for someone else.

Is that fair, Warren?

- [Warren] Yeah.

- I'd like to ask you the same question, Ariane.

How have you been able to navigate?

You've had to put on the gloves.

You've had to put on the armor and sometimes perhaps a sword.

How do you do it?

- Wow, so by going to see Warren at that January event, I learned that his obstacles and my obstacles weren't the same, but yet they were still there.

Since I had these blinders on, and I was in this bubble, as I said, and didn't realize all of the nuances, well, actually that's a lie.

I realized at five years old when my mother had my sister and I boycotting McDonald's restaurants.

(audience laughs) Boycotting McDonald's restaurants because they did not have franchises.

So as I sit here and I think about that, I am the reason that Warren is sitting here in a billion-dollar business.

(group laughing) That's it.

- Thank you.

You're welcome, so maybe we can share some of those billions.

(group laughing) But seriously, so I mean, I saw the inequities early but sorta almost didn't think it was about me, and I'm always just fighting for others.

That's what helps me keep going, fighting for others, doing that navigation, being a pioneer for the audacity to own and be a part of the economic wealth of the entire United States.

It is our right.

That is what happened when we came over here some 400 years ago and we built this country.

So it is our right.

So the navigation has been difficult for me, but it's been possible.

And the reason it's been so difficult is because it, the way that others see me.

So I was a single mom.

Soon as I wanted to go back to school and everything, and I came from a middle-class neighborhood, and I wanted to do better.

"Well, you gotta get on welfare so you can go to college."

So that was the first stigma that had to happen.

I'm like, "Wow, how do you be poor?"

I learned real quick.

(audience laughs) When you're applying for certain things for your business, it's amazing that they don't send you to the business industries, but, "Let's send you to the Black folks thing.

Let's send you over here."

So that way we don't have that same access to capital and not just the access to capital, the access to networking, the social capital.

All those things are missing because the presumptions and the prejudicial assumptions about me were different.

And then, so I unfortunately became and looked like this angry Black woman.

And then we had that, that's a negative connotation, but sometimes it's all right to be angry because you have to be angry and stand up for just not yourself but for so many.

I don't wanna be the first and only anymore.

We are not reaching a goal.

Seven, when what's the name, Kennedy?

Kennedy, and Johnson, they came up with the percentage for women FBE businesses at 7%.

You know what it is today?

7.8%, 7.8%, so that means the navigation in the world is, the journey is still there.

So I applaud you, and I thank you for calming me down sometimes and knowing that we can reach goals like that because I wouldn't have believed it.

So I run a lot of my structure of my business like you, but I'm still angry sometimes.

I've started my business with 17 cents.

I was receiving medical benefits.

36% of the Black-owned, of Black families are at 0% net wealth.

Five years ago, as my company was starting to break into that million, I was still at 0% net wealth.

I didn't understand the business equity.

I didn't understand that language.

But now, because of folks like Warren Anderson, I have that opportunity because we live in a county now that recognizes that we just can't have quotas anymore, that we have to have outcomes.

Pay attention to that.

No quotas, we have to have outcomes, because without outcomes, we don't have sustainability.

I'm here to stay.

(audience applauding) I'm building a legacy business, so.

- Ariane, in our planning for this, you shared something specific about quotas, the 15% and how you were forced to compete if you are to accept such propositions.

And so can you answer the question, is the preponderance of your business the result of said quotas?

I know the answer, but I'd like everyone to hear it.

- Right, and that's difficult for me, because unfortunately it is to get your foot in the door, and what happens is we have so many Black-owned businesses, Black and Brown businesses that live on that quota.

They don't, they might be construction companies.

They might be technology companies.

And I'm not saying this about all, but they can't build a gingerbread house because they're living on a quota.

Is that what we want?

How do we increase the net wealth and the net wealth of a community?

If we did the right thing, do you know that if we took all the Black businesses, we would improve the economics by $200 billion.

We have to do what Barack Obama said, "Focusing your life simply on making a buck, it just shows a certain level of poverty.

It's when you hitch your wagon to something bigger than yourself when you reach your full potential."

I think about that every single day.

17 cents I started with, one employee.

The second employee came, I happened to have a $100 bill in my back pocket, pulled it out and say, "Here, I don't know what we doing, but let's start this business, and let's grow."

That was two businesses in 2009, and combined businesses, I have over 150 employees now, and the majority are minorities.

The majority are women, my women leadership team.

That's my team over there, my family right there.

Y'all stand up for a second, please.

(audience applauding) But that's why, and not just because of them, it's because of you-all's kids, you-all's generation so that we can grow and be this diverse and sharing all this wealth.

We can all share in Warren's money.

(audience laughing) I mean, that's what- - Did you see him?

- Yeah.

(audience laughing) - Thank you for that.

(audience laughing) - Yeah, thank you.

- Yeah.

(laughs) - So I wanna share a story with you, 'cause it's a little different twist on what you just said.

So in 1994, Nelson Mandela in South Africa was released from prison, and he became president shortly after that.

And at that point, McDonald's Corporation, which had refused to go into South Africa to open up restaurants, decided they would go into the market of South Africa.

So I started going there in 1994, ostensibly to set up a distribution network for the McDonald's restaurants there.

So I would do the same, well, at that point, I was looking for McDonald's to award the business to a local South African distributor.

Well, I had, I found a partner, a South African company.

We decided to do a joint venture together, and the day that we were supposed to pitch McDonald's, this company informs me at eight o'clock, we were going into a meeting at 8:30, that they were pitching the business without me.

And they were white, I was Black, obviously, and I realized they were playing with a different set of rules.

They had the infrastructure, I didn't.

I had the know-how, but I didn't have the infrastructure.

And I kinda thought, "I can still pull this off."

So I excused myself from the meeting, ran into another meeting room where I knew the McDonald's people were meeting that were gonna award the business, and in about 15 minutes, I convinced them to award me the business and cut them out.

- Love it, love it.

(audience applauding) - I think it's that, it's really that kind of mindset where we have to have- - Yep.

- Where you are not a, what is, could be perceived as a barrier is an obstacle, not a barrier.

You can get around it, you can figure it out.

And I think sometimes we can be, it can be a daunting hurdle.

But I think our success, and those in the room, all of us have had to get around hurdles that are put up before us.

- Absolutely, thank you.

As we prepare to go to Q&A, just a couple of, or maybe a few thoughts.

Both of you represent what's possible, right?

Regardless of where we start, the obstacles that come along the way, you both represent what's possible.

Secondly, I like that you two are leading the conversation here, right?

You are coming from different paths, and you're sharing a shared but distinct story, and perseverance is part of it.

What others think and how they behave is going to be what they choose, but I heard perseverance is key.

I heard that we can't allow that to be the obstacle.

And so I just, I wanna thread the needle here that the behaviors are the same as we saw in the '50s, as we saw in the turn of the prior century, the behaviors are very similar.

I think what's different is that we've got a couple more Warren Andersons and Ariane Kirkpatricks.

We've got proof of concept.

We've got genuine dialogue and talk.

We can plug in in ways that maybe we could have, we didn't know how.

As we transition to Q&A, I'm a finance guy, and I can't leave a conversation without some thought around action items.

So as you're framing your questions, for those of you who are listening today and in decision-making roles and that allow you to remove obstacles, biases and otherwise, I've got three thoughts.

One, here's what we need from you.

We need you to care.

We need you to care enough to do something about it and force your voting to reflect it.

Two, in the hiring practices in your companies, perhaps consider redacting the name or the address to remove unintended or bias in general.

And three, does the bank underwriter need to know your address before making a credit decision, to perhaps unintentionally influence a decision because of a perception of a particular part of town?

As you think about that and you form your questions, I turn the floor over to Dan Moulthrop.

(audience applauding) - We are about to begin the audience Q&A.

For those in our livestream and radio audience, I'm Dan Moulthrop, chief executive here at The City Club.

We are joined on our panel by Ariane Kirkpatrick, Warren Anderson, and the panel's moderated by Michael Jeans.

We welcome questions from everyone, City Club members, guests, students, and those of you joining us via our livestream at cityclub.org or our radio broadcast at 89.7 WKSU Ideastream Public Media.

If you'd like to tweet a question, please tweet it @thecityclub, and you can text your questions as well to 330-541-5794.

The number again is 330-541-5794, and our staff will try to work it into the program.

May we have our first question, please?

- [Lee] Hello, Lee Weingart, how are you?

- Hey, Lee.

- Can you speak to the absence or presence of startup capital available for minority-owned businesses in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors?

Is it available?

- Could you, I didn't hear the first part of your question.

- [Lee] Can you speak to the absence or presence of startup capital, venture capital, for minority-owned businesses, either in the nonprofit sector or the for-profit sector?

- So I think capital is available, but the irony about some of the startup capital that's available from my point of view, and you may, is that when you need it most, it's the most difficult to get, and then once you get some money, it's real easy.

So I think the barriers or the hurdles can be significant.

So I think there needs to be, and I think you're doing that with, and some other companies are looking at startups in a different way because they don't always have the collateral.

I've got the collateral, so it's not as difficult for me as it used to be, but it's a real challenge.

- I would have to agree with Warren.

A lotta times it's there, but some of the applications and the qualifications for Black and Brown businesses are difficult, and we don't make the application.

And many times they send the money back.

I remember there was a program, a big program here, and it was what a majority community had put that application together.

And as people were applying, nobody was able to receive it or accept it.

So every year this program they're like, "Oh, they don't want it, they don't want it."

No, it's not that we don't want it.

It's that we need to do the application processes based on a diverse process.

So a lotta times we do lose the money.

On a sitcom, real quick, Eddie Murphy, "Saturday Night Live" many years ago, he painted his face white and said, "I'm gonna pretend I'm a white man," and he went into the store to get a piece of bubble gum, and they said, "Why are you trying to pay for it?

Take it."

The newspaper, yeah.

(audience laughs) Yeah, he went to get a newspaper, and they're like, "Huh, newspaper."

But then he went to the bank, and he was this white man at the bank.

And it was a Black banker that was having him fill out the application, the whole process.

And the white manager came up and said, "Oh, I'll take him from here."

And he took the pen, he took the loan application, chup-chup, ripped it up, started pulling money outta the bag, "Here, here."

It's funny, and it's a sitcom, but it's so true.

So the qualifications and processes, great question, are different.

- If I could round that out quickly, there are a number of funds, right?

We see that there's capital allocated.

What I'm looking for is a preponderance of successful Black-owned businesses that have been the recipients of those funds.

The proof is in the pudding.

And if we've been at it for as long as we suggest, the evidence should be on the street.

- [Ariane] Yep.

- I want to thank The City Club for organizing this in the first place.

Second thing is I wanna thank both of you for coming and being open to be, share your thoughts.

My concern is that people see you and say, "If you work hard enough, you can make it."

And I know Warren has, I know him, so have told me stories about how hard it is to get out of and go and do the work you need to get done and how many obstacle he had to climb to get there.

And I think we need to talk about that a lot more to get people to understand it's not that easy.

It took a lotta hard work for both of you to get to where you are.

It's not that easy to get the bank loan.

It's not as easy to talk to a corporation to give you the business and all of the things that you have to go through to get to that point where you're sitting over here.

There are people sitting in this room that going to say, "Oh, if they can do it, I can do it, too," but they don't, or other people should be able to do it.

And I want you to just emphasize how hard it is to do that and how the rest of the society has to make it easier for people of color to be able to succeed.

- Wow.

(audience applauding) That is so, so important because I don't want you to look up here and say, "Oh, these are two successful businesses, and there have not been any issues."

There have been issues.

There has been a fight.

There's been a journey, but we can, so you have to first have that mindset to believe.

But then we also make sure that we have to tell you about our journeys and our struggles so you don't think it's that easy.

But you have to put in the hard work.

Single mom, welfare, medical benefits.

My first stint in business was a, what do you call that?

Factoring, anybody know about factory?

- [Audience Member] Yep.

- Not too many other people might not know about this, but some Black and Brown folks and some poor folks really know.

That's when people buy your invoices for a large percent.

That's how I made my business.

I didn't make any money in the beginning.

That's why I was at that zero net wealth, because I had to do invoice factoring.

Then I went from there to another organization that gave us money, but the interest rate was so, so, so high, but I stepped on that ladder, every opportunity, and then I went to a bank that just said, "Hey, we're gonna give you some money," and that interest was a little higher also.

I got turned down for a big loan because, you're not gonna believe this, credit score finally getting high, 'cause I had a ticket because my daughter, my stepdaughter, she parked on the street after two o'clock, and I had to write a letter to this bank for underwriting to say, "I'm not a crook."

Who has to do that for a business?

And this is a true story.

But now I'm in the position where another bank just said, "Hey, here, here's the money."

I'm Eddie Murphy now.

I'm getting that money outta that bag, I'm getting it.

A lotta folks are reaching out to me to give, so you just have to keep going.

So for, I mean, just excellent question.

It's not easy.

It's not a journey.

There are obstacles, but if we don't step into the obstacle, we are not gonna jump over that bridge to success.

- So when I was in college, my senior year, I went to the University of Michigan.

- [Audience Member] Whoo!

(group laughing) - No.

- I had a routine.

I had a routine where I lived near a drugstore, and every Sunday morning, I would walk from my apartment and buy a Sunday, no, it was a "Detroit Free Press" Sunday newspaper, and one day I walked to the store, and I forgot the 50 cents, it was 50 cents, and I saw a friend of mine.

If you imagine there was an open door, and there were newspapers on the inside of the door, each side of the door.

I saw a friend of mine who was Ethiopian.

I stepped outside of the store to ask him for 50 cents to pay for the newspaper, and the owner sent two guys out and grabbed me and tried to take me into a basement to wait for the police.

So I got arrested for attempting to steal a newspaper.

I was senior at Michigan.

I was being considered for a foreign service job.

I went to the store owner, and I said, "Listen, I'm a good kid, I'm just," you know, "believe me, I wasn't stealing your newspaper.

This could really wreck my life."

And the guy said, "I'm prosecuting you."

I went to trial, a trial by jury.

- [Michael] Over 50 cents.

- Over a 50-cent newspaper.

But here's what was kind of interesting.

Years later, I'm applying for something, and that comes up on my record, and thank God I fought that, and I had parents who supported me.

I can't imagine where I would be had I pled guilty, which is what the prosecutor wanted me to do.

He said, "Take a deal.

I can do a plea deal for you."

So many of us come to points in our life where the road you take, you don't understand how important it is for you down the road, and that made all the difference.

And very often we're continually presented with those kind of decision points, and the road we choose, that moment where I refused to be a victim, and I said, "I'm going to court."

- Yep.

- My parents said, "You go to court," otherwise that could've tripped me up my life for the rest of my life.

- You know, those are the stories that are unfortunately all too common and familiar, right?

- Yep.

- And the reality is, being Black in America, doing the most routine things put everything at risk, going to buy a 50-cent paper, driving on the street and a light is out.

One of my children would share with me that one of the, if you can say there's a good thing about a pandemic environment, was that I was working remote and home.

The fear of me not getting home safe apparently was weighing on my teenage child.

I mean, that hurt, right?

So if you think about the cumulative stories that are real, it is no wonder that there are adverse health consequences in the African American community.

It's no wonder that the infant mortality rate is as high as it is.

It's no wonder that you happen upon someone and they weren't as patient as you thought they should be.

But it is, but in that moment of impatience, if it were, everything is on the line again, right?

So as a community, there's a warm simmer on a scale to 10 of about an eight all the time and an expectation of perfection.

And so when Warren and Ariane say, "Yes, but we have to persist, yes, but we have to keep moving forward" and both agree that it's not just for us, although we need you to be here, but thinking about our grandchildren's grandchildren, how do we move the needle?

And to be fair, America has always had the abolitionists.

America hasn't advanced because Black folks were upset or mistreated, but that there were allies, and in a collective voice, the needle was moved.

Those allies still exist today.

I think others are a bit louder.

I think we gotta find our voice.

I think we have to see ourselves in each other again.

These sound like personal matters, but how can they not affect the business?

How many times have we told folks to leave their baggage at the door when they get to work?

How many times as an African American have you been told, and perhaps others, have you been told in one way or another your lived experience is somehow discounted while everyone else's lived experience is validated?

How can we get better about such things?

My question for you is, as the audience seeks to reduce some of the obstacles that we've shared, who some may not share the same lived experiences but can appreciate it and want to do more, what are your recommendations?

Not a exercise of charity or benevolence, because I don't think either of you are asking for favors.

- Right.

- Right, can we just get what's at par?

Can I get the same shot that the other person has?

But as we think about those who could be our neighbors and who aren't, those who are leaning in but not really sure how to take the step further, what thoughts do you have?

- Well, one thought I have is there's a gentleman sitting over at a table over there whose name is Marc Morgenstern, hey, Marc.

(laughs) Why do I mention his name?

Well, when I first got into business, Marc, who was and still is an attorney, I think really, while he wasn't Black, really helped me navigate in an arena that I was not familiar with.

And I think we have to trust people that may look different than us, and that goes both ways.

And Marc, you were really a great business counselor as well as a friend back in the early '90s.

So I think these kind of dialogues are extremely important and to be able to develop friendships that can truly help change your view of the larger world, and Marc certainly did that for me back when I was struggling back in the early '90s.

- I have to add, while historically things were quite different, do not treat us like a charity case.

Treat us equal, treat us as your peers.

When you have a RFQ come out, and I know it's well thought of, so let's just, just as a little lesson, let me just teach you a few things.

So when you have a RFQ and you say, "Oh, we wanna be so inclusive, so we wanna make sure we have all the minorities bid on this project, so we're gonna do a set-aside."

So this whole thing are five or six, eight different minority contractors, and they're all competing against each other.

I don't wanna always compete against my peers.

I wanna compete against you.

So let's make it where we are able to reach those levels, not a charity case, not a welfare case, not things so that we can systemically stay on welfare all our life or depend on handouts or depend on quotas and everything.

Let's think about the outcomes again.

The RFQ process, also, something else that we should do is the selection process.

It can't just look like a majority of white males.

It needs to be diverse of women, Asian, Black, everybody, so that we can make sure that those diverse thoughts are in choosing your companies that you wanna do business with.

It's not good just to put it on your website and say, "We're diverse," or "We hired a supplier diversity," or "We did this," think about the outcomes.

What can you do to really make a difference?

So that's important.

- Your point about the set-asides, just to be clear, the five, six, or seven businesses led by people of color, are they competing for the 100%?

- Nope.

(Ariane laughs) (audience chattering) - So typically not, so we we're always competing against each other, or we are competing for five, I'll never forget this one job, it was 10%.

We were gonna get 10%, and it was a DBE.

I hate DBE because the name of it is disadvantaged business.

If you keep telling me I'm disadvantaged, I'm gonna stay at a disadvantage.

Let's change that name.

Somebody write the State of Ohio, tell 'em to change that name tomorrow.

Write that, please help me with that.

(audience applauding) So if we, they had 10%, and so they had given me 9.8% and said, "Oh, we're sorry, we gonna make sure the next job we make up and give you 0.2%."

Are you crazy?

Come on now.

I mean, and those are things that, it's unbelievable.

The most woke folks stay that way.

Or this one happens to me all the time.

"There was no diversity requirement on this job, so we didn't call you."

- [Audience Member] Wow.

- I mean, that happens all the time.

So I just got a job, and they just pretty much, it was a private job, and I'm minority, and they gave it to me.

So I can't wait until this guy that told me say, "Hey, why didn't you call me?"

"Oh, they didn't need any majorities."

(audience laughing) That's what I'm gonna say.

But I'm just waiting for him to ask me, 'cause I know he's gonna ask.

But seriously, put us all together.

And I know it's well, I know the people that are doing that, they don't think about it and think it's okay, but let's do more diverse competition, and let's change some of the scoring.

Cuyahoga County changed the scoring, 'cause we know they were 4.62% of only hiring women and minorities here in Cuyahoga County projects, 4.62%.

Really, Black folks were only 0.7% of all the contracts there, and we had to change that.

So let's not work just on percentages, I can go on and on.

- That's all right, thank you for that.

I've missed someone with a question here.

- We have a Twitter question for Ms. Kirkpatrick.

"Thank you for speaking for Black women entrepreneurs.

Your perseverance is inspiring.

However, in what ways would you like to see folks, customers, politicians, banks, business support agencies, government, et cetera, show up for you and entrepreneurs like you?"

- Very important, if you read the news here lately, for the past three years, the city of Cleveland has been the worst place for Black women, three categories, economics, education, and healthcare.

We definitely need to change it.

We have the top hospitals here.

I build them here in Cleveland with Cleveland Clinic and University Hospital.

We should not be the worst for healthcare.

I remember specifically, and when I saw it, I remember being in that interim of poorness and not knowing where to go, and I didn't have any benefits.

I didn't have any medical, the welfare, or the hospitalization, and I remember being sick and having a asthma attack and driving all over because I did not know what to do.

I was crying, sitting in a parking lot at Lee-Harvard thinking I was gonna die because I didn't have any medical benefits.

That's how it is, that's the truth of how it is for a Black woman.

The education, when, like I told you before, "Get on welfare and then you can get financial aid," you know, those things that make us stay stagnant.

So what we need to do is we need to pay attention.

Just don't print that story and talk about it.

Change it, change the narrative.

Change the healthcare here for Black women.

Change the education, and most definitely change the economics, 'cause when you have a Black woman that got some money, she gonna take care of a community.

She is gonna uplift you whether you're white or Black, poor or rich, I'm just saying.

- You're right.

- I'm just saying.

- You're just saying.

(audience applauding) - So when, when I met her years ago, she had the it factor then.

- Yeah.

- And you still got it.

(panel laughing) - Isn't that the truth, Merle.

- Thank you, thanks for being here.

It's a great program.

From the time they're young, the message to children is, "Get a job, get a job, get a job."

Talk about any interaction you've had with young people so that they can follow your example.

- Are you looking at, okay, well, I am, again that, my Barack Obama, "When you hitch your wagon to something bigger than yourself, that's when you reach your potential."

Helping others to be in this position is my mantra that makes me operate.

We work, we do a program with ACE where we teach folks about architecture construction engineer.

We teach kids.

We have Rosie's Girls.

Rosie's Girls is a program that has girls in the sixth grade and seventh grade that teach them about construction.

When I did that program as a volunteer, it was so successful.

I was at a event, someone stopped me and they said, "You had my goddaughter in that program.

She is now graduating from Bowling Green with a degree in architecture because she heard your story," she heard your story.

It's important for us to do the kids at a early age, tell them that they can be whatever they wanna be.

- Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

(audience applauding) - Today at The City Club, we are exceedingly grateful to our panelists and our moderator.

Our moderator, the last voice you heard, was Michael Jeans, founding president of Growth Opportunity Partners.

Joining him on stage, Ariane Kirkpatrick, president and CEO of The AKA Team and other businesses and Warren Anderson, president and CEO of the Anderson-DuBose Company.

This forum is part of our Building Success series presented in partnership with Huntington.

We're grateful for their support and their partnership.

We'd also like to welcome guests at tables hosted by AKA Team and Harvest of Ohio.

And that brings us to the end of our forum today.

There's plenty more coming up.

You can find out about all of it at cityclub.org.

Members and friends of The City Club, it's great to see all of you.

Thank you so much for being with us today.

Our forum is now adjourned.

(bell rings) (audience applauding) (energetic music) - [Announcer] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of The City Club, go to cityclub.org.

(bright music) - [Announcer] Production and distribution of City Club Forums on Ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Inc.